Has the modern church failed us? I have been thinking about this lately.
Some preachers are good at giving us rules and telling us how to dress. But don’t teach us how to live a godly life. The practical application to apply God to our lives.
How do we cultivate the wisdom that enables us to consider everything we encounter in the world from a godly perspective?
We live in a world full of ideas.
Whether we are watching a movie, listening to music, looking at a person’s social media, or scanning YouTube or the daily news, we are constantly bombarded with ideas, stories, and narratives. Some of them we agree with, and some rub us the wrong way. Others, well, we are not sure what to think.
That’s why having a consistent frame of reference is so important. It helps us to make sense of all those ideas flying at us.
Trying to sort through all those ideas can feel overwhelming. It’s more than a bunch of rules a church has or the way a person dresses.
This practical and accessible wisdom is found in the Bible, but how many people actually spend time reading the Bible. Most Bibles in a person’s home if they even have one are sitting on a shelf collecting a thick layer of dust.
Every person has a worldview, whether we realize it or not. It’s the way that we see the world that encompasses our experiences, beliefs, and ideas about what we think is good or bad, right or wrong or worth out time or waste of time.
It’s a fact that most people believe what others tell them without a second thought or just follow the crowd.
I recall seeing a news reporter asking a young lady protesting a few months “What are you protesting?” the young lady said, “I don’t know.”
There will always be people in this world who try and force their worldviews on you. Anything we watch or listen to or consume should be addressed with some basic questions.
- Was it good and worthy of praise?
- What’s bad and to be rejected?
- What is most important in life?
You may not realize it but with every piece of information we are told by a person or for entertainment purposes we consume has something to do with the above questions.
Something as simple as a commercial has a worldview. Even a car commercial that tells us if you buy this bright shiny new vehicle, you life will be better. That’s a worldview, one that enforces the ultimate empty promise that true happiness in life comes through consumption and acquiring stuff.
The person doing the commercial doesn’t care if you can afford the car or not, or even if you have to go in debt up to your eyeballs. He is making money to get you to buy the car he is selling. He is banking on enticing you to buy the car regardless of the circumstances in your life.
If we pay attention to the idea floating around we begin to see that the people delivering those ideas care about some things and not others. Sometimes it’s obvious. Other times, it’s subtle. But if you dig a bit, there’s always a worldview being expressed. It embraces some values and perhaps rejects others.
A worldview is a way of looking at life that helps us make sense of it. It’s usually a patchwork of ideas, beliefs, and feelings all stitched together by our experiences. And these days, worldviews are often described today using the word narrative, which gets at the fact that our perspective of life is, in many ways, story like.
Everyone has a worldview, a perspective on reality. In fact, you can’t not have one. And when we choose to have a relationship with Jesus, He begins to reshape our hearts, minds, and souls. We become justified by faith in Him in a moment, but the process of sanctification of growing to be more like Him takes a lifetime.
If we grow in our Biblical worldview by reading and thinking deeply about the scriptures, we see two different paths toward making sense of life and everything in it, one shared by the world and one shaped by God’s truth.
Paul writes in Ephesians 5:15-17,
“Look carefully then Joe you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because they days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.” (ESV).
We might be tempted to believe that the ideas and values of the world don’t influence us. But Paul taught differently. He understood that the ways of the world bend toward “evil” toward things in opposition to God.
How To Follow God:
From Pity to Praise 